“Marriage is not easy.” People always says, “However, if you are willing to work and submit to the process, it promises great reward.” But how exactly?

To answer this question, we can gain some insights from married couples. I combine the ‘cleaned_hm.csv’ with ‘demographic.csv’ in HappyDB, focusing specifically on married individuals (and also based on parenthood for part of the analysis). I used word cloud and bar plot analyses to decipher the key elements that contribute to marital happiness (redundant and meaningless word will be ignored).

This report is prepared with the following environmental settings.

print(R.version)
##                _                           
## platform       aarch64-apple-darwin20      
## arch           aarch64                     
## os             darwin20                    
## system         aarch64, darwin20           
## status                                     
## major          4                           
## minor          3.1                         
## year           2023                        
## month          06                          
## day            16                          
## svn rev        84548                       
## language       R                           
## version.string R version 4.3.1 (2023-06-16)
## nickname       Beagle Scouts

Question 1: Who makes married people happy?

A happy marriage requires a happy husband and wife, so as a first step I wanted to know what things and specific people can make both parties happy in a marriage.

Happiness in marriage are closely related to the spouse, as a huge part of happy moment description for married men and women contain the keywords “wife” and “husband”. Meanwhile, there’s difference that for married women, their husbands bring them significant happiness compared to other things, while men find almost equal happiness in work-related achievements.

Let’s see in a more intuitive way by plotting the pie chart that shows the percentage of happy moment related to three main relationships (spouse, kids, friends).

Pie chart shows similar results, but at the same time, what word cloud does not show is that kids are also an important factor in making married couples happy, so we will discuss the impact of children on the happy marriage later.

Question 2: What should people do to make their spouse happy?

From results above we can conclude that a happy marriage mainly depends on the behavior of the spouse. So I want to know, for men and women respectively, what their spouses need to do to make them happy.

Having dinner together and spend more time together at home could make a marriage happy, since they are mentioned a lot in the happy moment for both married men and women.

We can see more clearly through bar plot that shows 10 most frequent words in happy moment. “home”, “work”, “dinner” are top 3 words mentioned in the happy moment for both married men and women, and we can see some common keyword like “together”, “night”.

Based on the result, we could make a preliminary conclusion that the key to have a happy marriage is about accompany, spending more time together at home, having dinner with the one you love, and be at home at night. It is worth mentioning that for married men, ‘dinner’ was a standout theme, indicating its importance in their marital happiness, while women showed a more balanced appreciation for activities.

Besides, women focus more on the surprises and special occasions like birthday and anniversary. Husband should put effort into celebrating special occasions to maintain a happy marriage.

These are my inferences merely based on the words. What exactly does “dinner”, “home”, and “work” refer to? I selected 10 happy moments that contain those words from married men and women respectively.In order to ensure the results are representative, I proceed many times, but in this report I’m only able to reflect one of these results.

For married men:

##  [1] "Recently my wife helped decided to great me at the door with dinner ready. I know this doesn't seem like a big deal since most men might experience this on a daily bases, but my wife rarely does this for me. I was so happy when she did this because I was having a bad day and this cheered me right up."
##  [2] "My wife made a great steak dinner with potatoes"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
##  [3] "My wife made me peanut and butter sandwich to take to work as my lunch"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
##  [4] "When I got off of work, I picked up drinks and a snack from Sonic for my wife, and we went on an hour long car ride together.\r\n"                                                                                                                                                                            
##  [5] "I was happy today when my Wife surprised me with me with my favorite chocolate from my hometown that I haven't had in several years."                                                                                                                                                                         
##  [6] "My spouse told me about how well his evening went at work and I was happy for him."                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
##  [7] "My wife cuddled with me on the couch after work."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
##  [8] "I went out to dinner with my wife and it was really good."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
##  [9] "My wife made my favorite meal for dinner tonight"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
## [10] "Yesterday I made the decision to work only a half day at work today (Friday), so it will be a short work day and I get to spend time with my wife and daughter."

For married women:

##  [1] "My husband took a half day at work yesterday, that way he could spend time with his buddy (who was in town for an interview) before he left. It was just a pleasant morning and we were able to all go to lunch."
##  [2] "After dinner I recapped my day with my husband and shared jokes that I heard at work with him."                                                                                                                  
##  [3] "A few weeks ago my husband and I went to dinner and had great conversation with his cousin and her boyfriend."                                                                                                   
##  [4] "My husband brought home some really tasty tortilla chips."                                                                                                                                                       
##  [5] "My husband took my daughter to dance class on a busy day so I could finally sit and eat my dinner."                                                                                                              
##  [6] "I went out for karaoke with my husband and we had dinner together.  It was like we were dating again."                                                                                                           
##  [7] "I am happy that my husband worked fifty five hours this week because that .a lot of overtime that we needed."                                                                                                    
##  [8] "When my husband came home with new nail polish to give me a pedicure."                                                                                                                                           
##  [9] "I was happy when my husband came home and told me that his boss gave him a raise."                                                                                                                               
## [10] "My husband called me yesterday to tell me that he had booked a ticket for me and our son to get to him. He is staying far away for work."

From the results, it can be further confirmed that for both men and women, their happiness is most reflected in the company of their spouse, including their spouse coming home on time, being willing to spend quality time together and did something interesting, and their spouse making progress at work. Except for that, most people also mentioned the surprise made them happy.

Question 3: Does it change after having kids?

Does the key factor of a happy marriage change after having kids? Let’s explore if there’s difference by comparing the happy moment of married couples with and without kids according to the parenthood status.

Married Men

After having kids, “dinner” still appears most frequently for married men. Having dinner together is really important for married men regardless of the existence of kids.

Married Women

Spending time together remains important for happy marriage after having kids, the difference is that for both gender, emphasis on “work” increased a lot after having kids, especially for women. The results suggest a shift in priorities, balancing family time with professional achievements. Partner’s progress on work would contribute to a happy marriage after having kids.

Conclusions